Top Marks?

Yesterday saw the last financial results presentation given by the boss of the UK’s bellwether retailer, Marks and Spencer. Sir Stuart Rose, the former chief executive, now chairman, has stated that he will leave the business by next March after presiding over a tumultuous six year period of highs and lows. Luckily his final set of results saw sales increase by 5 per cent and market share in its critical clothing category has begun moving back up again too.

How will history judge Sir Stuart’s tenure in one of the top jobs in UK retailing? The immediate analysis from City commentators hasn’t been too kind pointing out that six years on, the company is pretty much back to where it started from with too many unresolved issues around its brand and its portfolio. Certainly, there was a period during 2006 and 2007 when it looked like the business was firing on all cylinders and profits climbed back up to the £1 billion barrier. Since then the small matter of a global recession has intervened together with problems in different parts of the M&S business, exacerbated by faster moving competitors. Does this make Sir Stuart or the brand a bad retailer? Most definitely not. In Sir Stuart’s own words yesterday: “I go home at night and look in the mirror and say, have I done as good a job as I could have done? Yes, I think the business is in a better state then when I inherited it”. And in many ways he is absolutely right. The M&S business today looks inherently better than when he took over with attractive, confident stores, high-profile advertising and resurgent international and online divisions.

The fact is though, that nothing stays still in retail, so to say that M&S has slipped back to where it was six years ago when Sir Stuart took over fails to take into account the changing market, changing consumers and changing competitors. The business faces new challenges as the new CEO, Marc Bolland stated yesterday too. There was disappointment from investors that news on the company’s response - or Marc Bolland’s - won’t come until November. As other retailers in charge of mega brands can testify, you simply can’t rush to judgement and have to fully understand a business before making decisions so they would certainly have sympathy for the new CEO.

Sir Stuart declared that the UK economy was definitely recovering and wasn’t worried about any “double dip” as a result of the new Government’s budget cuts. As a new addition to the World Retail Congress in October, Sir Stuart will be able to provide his usual candid appraisal of all those challenges facing not just a business like Marks and Spencer, but the retail sector as a whole.